F1Wolf wishes everybody Happy Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

I wish us another exciting Formula 1 season with 20 cars on the grid.

I also wish us all to either get used to the ugly 2009 cars or for the cars to at the end turn out to be less ugly than the early hybrid versions suggest .

I do hope that the 2009 season will be more about racing and less about scandals, politics and bankruptcies.

I also hope that in 2009 we will not loose any more traditional Grands Prix and instead we hear about F1 returning to USA and Canada.

Happy New F1 Year !

F1Wolf

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Was it fault of the drivers ?

The rumours about Fernando Alonso signing for Ferrari will probably keep on coming until the Spanish driver actually makes the move. But if we are to believe what we read in the news his eventual move to Ferrari would be a popular one in Italy. Several Italian racing figures voiced their support for Alonso-Ferrari link. But what I found interesting in those speaches is the hint at the quality of current Ferrari drivers by Cesare Fiorio, the former Ferrari team boss who granted Alonso his debut F1 test with Minardi in 1999:
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F1Wolf

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Carlos Slim - The saviour ?

The very quiet Christmas season was disturbed by the story in Italian papers La Stampa. The story has since been denied by both camps – Carlos Slim and Honda (see bottom of this article). The article posted on December 27 suggests that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has put his cash into the Honda F1 team:

“The news is not official as all the details have yet to be formalised. But two things are certain – the team has been saved and the drivers will be Jenson Button and rookie Bruno Senna.”

Bruno Senna connection does make sense. He has been one of the drivers considered and tested in Barcelona by Honda F1 prior to Honda’s withdrawal announcement. Also Bruno Senna has been sponsored by Embratel (subsidiary of Slim’s Telmex) since 2006.
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F1Wolf

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One of the highlights of the 2008 racing year for me was the Macau GP. Thanks to our quick Nick we had the opportunity to get to the heart of the action. Nick also mounted the video camera inside his Porsche and taped good one and half hour of racing action. I played around with his footage, added few bits caught on my camera and result is this 23 minutes video edit of Macau GP onboard footage. Warning – the footage includes some explicit language here and there .

Macau GP through the eyes of the driver from F1Wolf on Vimeo.

F1Wolf

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F1Wolf would like to wish all regular and accidental readers of this site a very Merry Christmas !

F1Wolf

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Honda has been making F1 headlines for all the wrong (or right ?) reasons for weeks but in last few days Toyota has been getting rather unusual degree of attention too.

Their drivers Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli have both been confirmed for quite a while but these days nobody can take anything for granted. Grandprix.com run a short story about voices from Japan suggesting that Kamui Kobayashi (currently Toyota’s 3rd driver) may be promoted to racing seat for 2009 in expense of Jarno Trulli. The “persistent rumours” say that as a part of cost saving Toyota may disassemble the young drivers program and would need to place Kobayashi somewhere. And the good qualifier not so good racer Trulli may have to make the way. Toyota team president John Howett however says, that they have contract with Trulli in place, whatever that means.

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F1Wolf

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Prodrive - They gave up on 2008 entry, will they make it in 2009 ?

Many different parties have already been connected with the purchase of Honda F1 Racing. Some names were making some sense, some were just rubbish stories. But Nick Fry seems to be confident the buyer will be found:

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F1Wolf

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The F1 liveries of the past are back – this is year 1997. The year when Williams were the dominant force, the year when Marlboro moved from McLaren to Ferrari. The McLarens turned silver/black, the barcode appeared on Ferrari cars for the first time. The variety of all the sponsors seems to have been much bigger back then, not too many of those are involved in F1 these days. And look at the variety of engines -Ferrari, Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Peugeot, Yamaha, Honda, Hart…

Update: I totally forgot about the MasterCard Lola … Added the livery to the bottom of the post

Williams-Renault

Williams-Renault (no tobacco)

Ferrari

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F1Wolf

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I found this message in my mailbox on Friday morning:

Your web hosting account has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems). Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted. If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.

Of course I felt that the deactivation was in error. So I contacted the customer service trying to find out what is the problem. That however they never told me. They threw some numbers at me saying once I get over those my account gets suspended. I never got even remotely close to those numbers. But arguments like those do not go well with those arrogant customer service people. All they said was that if I feel there is nothing wrong with my data then perhaps it is time to upgrade my hosting plan. Alternatively I was to hire a webdeveloper to solve the issues for me. What issues however they still did not tell me. Before I had chance to ask any more question they cut me off from the Live Chat too …

The help came via Facebook from Manila . It does not look like there was much wrong with my data other than the fact there seem to be way too many sites hosted on my old shared server. The hosting company does not care. For them the solution to their problems is to suspend their customers’ accounts witout any prior warning … Very strange way of customer care and services. All they achieved is that I moved the site to different host.

Thanks to everybody who offered me help yesterday and sent over those encouraging messages !

F1Wolf

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Two Honda teams started 2008 season, none will be back in 2009

The 2008 Formula One season was one the most exciting in recent memory. We have had new races, new faces, new race winners and a new champion. But 2008 was also year of losses for Formula One. Here is brief overview of what (who) we will not see next year:

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F1Wolf

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